Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Kline Playing Politics with Earmarks

[This is a letter to the editor, submitted to ThisWeek Eagan on February 23, 2008.]

Far from showing integrity, as another reader suggested, John Kline's position on earmarks is politics as usual.

An earmark is a congressional mandate that part of the budget must be spent on a given project. Earmarks can guarantee funding for worthwhile projects, and are only a problem when used for unnecessary boondoggles like Alaska's famed 'Bridge to Nowhere'. The solution is not to end earmarks, but to hold Congress accountable by identifying each earmark and the legislator who requested it.

John Kline put politics over principle and voted against earmark reform legislation last January, because it was more important to him to obstruct the new Democratic majority in Congress. Now he is playing political games by rejecting earmarks altogether, instead of doing his job to advocate for worthwhile projects in his district --- projects he acknowledges have merit. Some integrity.

1 Comments:

Anonymous said...

I just saw a John Kline commercial (10/30/08 6:30pm) in which Klimne states he's working to get rid of "earmarks". Last night I read my latest New Yorker magazine article about how Sarah Pahlin was selected (the Oct 27th issue page 39)states that the "town of Wasilla pop.6700 secured 27 million dollars of earmarks in federal money thru the efforts of Steven Silver a Washington-area lobbist who had been chief of staff to Alaska's long-serving Republican senator Ted Stevens, who was indicted in July on charges of accepting illegal gifts & is now standing trial." Maybe this is something John Kline isn't too comfortable explaining!